Three days after the 2025 NBA Finals finished with an anticlimactic Game 7 (thank Tyrese Haliburton’s Achilles tendon for pooping on that party), the 2025 NBA Draft got underway. It was an uncommonly quick turnaround from one group of athletes reaching the pinnacle of pro basketball to another group starting on their path toward the pinnacle — or at least toward a retirement pension if they play their cards right.

It’s likely that at least one player from this year’s draft class will, at some point in their career, win an NBA championship on a team for which they don’t contribute a lot. It’s also likely that at least one player from the Class of ’25 will develop into a bona fide star in the league, but will never win a championship. We got a glimpse of that in the most recent Finals: Isaiah Joe, a second-round pick in the 2020 draft, celebrated winning a title with the Oklahoma City Thunder after playing a total of 41 minutes during the seven-game series; while Tyrese Haliburton, a lottery pick in 2020 and a two-time All-Star for the Indiana Pacers, fell short of a title and (especially now that he has to recover from a major injury) may never again get so close to winning it all.

It begs the question: How much does winning a team championship really matter to an individual athlete’s legacy? If Haliburton is considered an elite NBA star and he doesn’t have a ring, but Isaiah Joe does have a ring and he barely stepped on their court, it’s clear that we can’t determine greatness simply by counting rings.

With the NBA and NHL recently crowning its champions, MLB title contenders emerging as its season enters the playoff stretch, and the opening of NFL training camps sparking talk of its title favorites, I’ve ranked the four major American sports leagues in terms of the importance of team championships on an individual player’s résumé. From the bottom to the top:

4. Baseball

A lot of people believe Barry Bonds is the greatest baseball player of all time, and he never won a World Series title. Ted Williams and Ty Cobb are also in that GOAT conversation, and neither of them won a World Series. Willie Mays and Hank Aaron are legit GOAT candidates, and the two of them have one World Series ring apiece after they each played 23 years in the majors. That couldn’t happen in any of the other Big Four leagues.

When someone argues on behalf of Babe Ruth (seven-time champion) or Mickey Mantle (seven) or Stan Musial (three) as baseball’s greatest, is their team success used as evidence nearly as much as their stats, cultural impact, and mythical stories? Do you really see MLB fans lobbing Lou Gehrig’s World Series win-loss record (6-1) to end a discussion, or breaking out Joe DiMaggio’s nine title rings as the mic-drop to prove that Joe D was better than Ken Griffey Jr. and his zero rings?

Major League Baseball’s World Series is the oldest of the Big Four championship finals, but it’s the least important when it comes to defining a player’s career.

It’s not just championship success that gets downplayed, either. Ten times, the winner of an MLB regular-season MVP award played on a losing team: Shohei Ohtani (twice), Mike Trout (twice), Ernie Banks (twice), Giancarlo Stanton, Alex Rodriguez, Cal Ripken Jr., and Andre Dawson. Even more pitchers have been similarly rewarded. Sixteen Cy Young Award winners have played for losing teams: Roger Clemens (twice), Bob Gibson, Steve Carlton, Gaylord Perry, Randy Jones, Bruce Sutter, Steve Bedrosian, Greg Maddux, Pat Hentgen, Pedro Martinez, Brandon Webb, Tim Lincecum, Zack Greinke, R.A. Dickey, and Felix Hernandez. And this season, there’s a decent chance Paul Skenes wins the NL Cy Young on a last-place Pirates squad.

As a Mariners fan, I watched Felix Hernandez put together a (should be) Hall of Fame career over 15 years with Seattle teams that never made the playoffs. His greatness was never in doubt. When he won the AL Cy Young in 2010, the M’s were deep into last place in the AL West with a 61-101 record, while Felix himself went 13-12 — but had a league-leading 2.27 ERA and struck out 232 batters. In nine of the losses that were charged to Felix that year, the Mariners scored zero runs or one run. Having followed the bulk of the careers of Felix, Griffey, and Ichiro in Seattle, I know as much as anyone that even the greatest baseball player cannot turn a bad team into a good one.

I think most people who understand baseball get that, which is why team success doesn’t mean as much when debating individual legacies. Griffey could go 4-for-4 with four homers in a game and play flawless defense in center field, and the M’s could still lose 12-4. Even a dominant starting pitcher (who gets run support, at that) can only take the mound once every four or five games; Felix could’ve won all of his 34 starts in that Cy Young year, and Seattle still would have missed the playoffs.

It’s fair to expect great baseball players to come through in the clutch, but it’s also a realistic possibility that a great baseball player won’t get many chances to be in championship-level clutch situations. Thus, it’s harder to hold it against someone like Griffey or Felix, or Bonds or Skenes, for not getting many bites at the apple.

3. Hockey

Honestly, I’m not nearly as well-versed on the history of the NHL and the habits of its fans and media as I am with the other sports on this list. I’ve covered my newness as a hockey fan in this space. But I do know that Stanley Cup championships matter a little bit more than World Series titles. And just like with baseball, you can figure that out by looking at the very top of the mountain.

ClutchPoints recently unveiled a ranking of the 25 best hockey players in history, and most of the guys at the top have a Cup or two (or more) to their name: Wayne Gretzky won four; Bobby Orr won two; Mario Lemieux won two; Gordie Howe won four; Jaromir Jagr won two; Maurice Richard won eight; Jean Beliveau won 10; Sidney Crosby has three; Alex Ovechkin has one; Niklas Lidstom won four. You have to go down to the 11th player on the list before you find someone who’s never hoisted the Stanley Cup — that would be Connor McDavid, the three-league league MVP who’s still just 28 years old and has plenty of time to win himself a Cup before he’s done.

The idea for this column actually originated while McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers were playing in the 2025 Stanley Cup Finals, which they’d lose (their second Finals loss in a row). There was a sports radio segment in which it was asked whether McDavid needs to win a championship to be considered one of the greatest hockey players of all time, or one of the greatest of his era. One side of the argument spoke to how, similar to baseball, the nature of hockey makes it so that even the best player on the ice can’t control enough of the game to will their team to victory — especially when they’re facing another title contender in the postseason. An excellent offensive creator like McDavid still needs teammates to finish the goal-scoring opportunities that he sets up for them, and needs teammates to set him up with good passes, and needs his defensemen and goaltender to do their job preventing the opponents from scoring.

What puts hockey above baseball in this ranking is that, although a hockey player can be just as forgiven as a baseball player for a lack of team success, the NHL’s consensus elite of the elite have racked up so many more championships than their MLB counterparts. Thus, it’s tougher to crack the list of NHL all-timers without that hardware than it is to get there in baseball, where so many greats retired ringless.

2. Football

How much a Super Bowl championship matters when judging an NFL player’s career is a tricky question, because it depends so much on that player’s position on the field. Can you really blame an offensive tackle if his team doesn’t win a title? No, but you could blame the offensive line that he plays on. Can you blame a cornerback if his team doesn’t win it all? Not really … unless he gives up one or two big plays that are costly in losing a title opportunity.

And then there are the quarterbacks, who exist in a whole different world when it comes to the importance of championships.

The sheer weight of team success on a quarterback’s legacy is enough to put football second in this ranking. In today’s ridiculously critical landscape of media and fan opinions, an NFL quarterback has to have some postseason success to even get a fair amount of respect, and yet there are still Super Bowl-winning QBs who can’t escape the critics and haters (think Jalen Hurts). Historically, there aren’t many QBs that have made it into the Pro Football Hall of Fame without winning a Super Bowl, an NFL championship, or an AFL championship. Dan Marino, Warren Moon, and Jim Kelly are on the short list. Then there are some QBs who get labeled as overrated just because they won a title or two; think Joe Namath, Eli Manning, and Terry Bradshaw.

Elsewhere on the field, many other NFL greats reached legendary status without winning a title. Some of them rarely even played for good teams, like Barry Sanders and Steve Largent and Dick Butkus. It’s way more difficult for a quarterback to earn those individual accolades without team success to back it up.

I’ve written before that football is the ultimate team sport — that if even one player misses their assignment, the whole team’s plans can and often will collapse. There’s nowhere to hide on the gridiron. Thus, one free safety cannot carry his team to a win, nor can one center, or one running back, or one edge rusher. Not even a quarterback can do it, contrary to how they’re portrayed on TV. For 10 of the 11 positions on the football field, championships do not really define an individual player’s career. But for one position, winning is almost everything. There’s no other sport that operates like that.

1. Basketball

No other team sport comes close, honestly. NBA fans and media have created an often irrational, sometimes toxic relationship between individual greatness and team success. Interestingly, it’s a fairly recent development. It wasn’t like this in the 1980s or 1990s; it didn’t really grow until midway through the 2000s, and over the last 20 years, the NBA has become the league for which championships matter the most to a player’s legacy. Arguably too much.

You don’t hear the word “ringless” thrown around in other sports debates nearly as much as you hear it in basketball — and that’s because retiring without a championship in the NBA draws more ridicule than sympathy. (Think about how James Harden is talked about compared to JJ Watt.) Remember that ClutchPoints ranking of NHL players, where you went 11 deep before finding someone who’d never won a Stanley Cup? Bleacher Report recently dropped its all-time Top 100 NBA ranking, and the highest-ranked ringless player on that list sits at 22nd. It’s Karl Malone, who is the league’s 3rd-leading career scorer and a two-time MVP; if he’d managed to win a championship, given the rest of his résumé, Malone would be safely in the top 15; if he’d won multiple titles, he’d be in the top 10.

We went over how MLB has given its highest individual awards to players on losing teams. That doesn’t happen in the NBA. Forget being on a bad team; in order to win MVP in the NBA, you almost always have to be on a great team. Between 1988 (Michael Jordan) and 2017 (Russell Westbrook), every MVP winner played on a team that had earned a top-3 seed in its conference. Just about every NBA award, with the exception of Rookie of the Year, tends to go to someone on a playoff team. The Heisman Trophy might be the one individual award in team sports that is more heavily influenced by team success than MVP in the NBA.

In no other sport do fans and media memorize — and weaponize — the championship win-loss records of individual players. Be honest: If I just say “6-0,” “4-6,” and “5-2,” you know exactly who I’m talking about. Now, take your time and recite the Super Bowl win-loss records of Jerry Rice, Lawrence Taylor, and Patrick Mahomes. Or, state the World Series win-loss records of Greg Maddux, Rickey Henderson, and Derek Jeter. Not even near the top of your mind, are they? It’s not even that bad in individual sports, where winning should be the ultimate measure of greatness. Who among us has committed to memory Tiger Woods’ win-loss record at The Masters, or Serena Williams’ record in French Open finals, or Carl Lewis’ record in Olympic finals? I’d bet a lot more people know that Stephen Curry is 4-2 in the NBA Finals, or that Tim Duncan was 5-1.

Why are people like this when it comes to the NBA? Go back to the baseball part about how much impact a single player can have on the game. Many view basketball as the polar opposite. It’s widely believed that a great basketball player can take over games almost single-handedly and pretty much will their team to victory. One player can dominate as a scorer and/or primary ball-handler and control their team’s offense unlike what even a quarterback can do on the football field. A basketball player can use picks and screens, but they don’t need an entire offensive line to get their shots off. Because they play offense and defense, a basketball player can theoretically impact the game on every single possession. They can get a defensive rebound, a block, or a steal on one end, take the ball up the court themselves, and score a bucket without anyone else touching the ball. (Hockey players can do that too, but I think everyone understands that controlling a puck with a stick is a lot more difficult than controlling a basketball with your hands.)

And so, NBA superstars are saddled with more responsibility than their counterparts in football, baseball, and hockey. And the weight of team wins and losses is put on their shoulders more than it is for their counterparts in other sports.

Thus, NBA fans and media have a really bad habit of viewing 5-on-5 basketball through the lens of 1-on-1 competition. You’ve heard it before: Steph Curry blew a 3-1 Finals lead to LeBron … Anthony Edwards swept Kevin Durant … Shai Gilgeous-Alexander beat Nikola Jokic in Game 7. That mentality leads to undervaluing the contributions of non-superstars, and also overvaluing what it means for a superstar when his team loses or wins.

The root of all this, of course, is tied to the unholy trinity of sports arguments: Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and LeBron James.

Before Kobe and LeBron rose to prominence, when Jordan was still building his legacy, fans and media treated the NBA like the other team sports throughout the 20th century: “Can they win the big one?” was more important than “How many rings?” Star athletes simply had to prove once that they could win it all; not that they had to win all the time. In the 1990s, Hakeem Olajuwon validated his career when he won his first NBA title; when he added a second title it as icing on the cake, not a source of ridicule because he still didn’t have as many rings as Larry Bird. That first championship didn’t just vindicate Hakeem for his previous Finals loss and the five first-round playoff losses he’d accumulated before ’94, it changed the entire reputation of Houston sports teams: their nickname went from “Choke City” to “Clutch City” overnight.

When Jordan won his first NBA title in 1991, it was widely viewed as the moment when he became the “GOAT” — because what mattered most is that he proved he could win the big one. Nevermind that Bill Russell was sitting there with 11 rings, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar with six, Magic Johnson with five, Wilt Chamberlain with two. The ring count wasn’t important then like it is now. When Kobe, and later LeBron, began to pose real challenges to Jordan’s legacy, the rise of “ring culture” and the ring-count wars took over NBA discourse. No matter what heights Kobe and LeBron reached, one thing they couldn’t do was replicate Jordan’s undefeated Finals record. Kobe’s Lakers losing the 2004 Finals (when he wasn’t even the face of the franchise) and LeBron’s Cavaliers losing the 2007 Finals (when he was only 22 years old) gave them a demerit that could never be erased. Failing to match Jordan’s ring count, while also losing in the Finals, is enough for some people to declare that Kobe and LeBron cannot be better individual basketball players than Jordan. That kind of logic has infected the NBA as a whole.

It trickles down from there. When it comes to legacy debates, player rankings, post-retirement career analysis, and the growing reputations of active players, the NBA corners the market on championships being the be-all, end-all of what we call success.